


Meditations on a Poppy

by janto321 (FaceofMer)



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Armistice Day, Gen, Introspection, Post-World War I, Reflection, Remembrance Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 16:54:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21449545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaceofMer/pseuds/janto321
Summary: A hundred years ago this was a battlefield. The land and an angel remember.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 59
Collections: A Little Hope





	Meditations on a Poppy

Aziraphale stood in a field. The sun was just rising over the horizon, lending a golden light to the grass. Birds sang somewhere nearby. All was peaceful and quiet.

As he closed his eyes and spread out his hands he could hear the screams of men and machines. He could feel the blood-soaked ground beneath his feet. It wasn’t the first battlefield he’d stood upon and it wouldn’t be the last. Humans had been finding reasons to slaughter one another for millennia.

But this war had been different. Human ingenuity turned to extermination. And what the bullets didn’t take, the mud and pestilence and despair and hunger often claimed for their own.

Aziraphale opened his eyes again. It had been years since this field had borne witness to carnage, and yet it still bore scars. A dip in the ground where a shell had blown lives to bits. A slight rise men had huddled behind in a desperate attempt to protect themselves. A twisted and rusted bit of barbed wire, hidden in the grass.

He crouched down and touched the soil, as if he could somehow provide a benediction to the long dead.

Quite recently he’d had a hand in stopping armageddon. Not that they’d done much. In truth, humans had saved themselves

He plucked a poppy from the ground and stood again. In another hundred years how much would be remembered? Human lives were short, and already what happened in this field had all but passed from living memory. They’d find another reason to kill each other, War sowing her seeds of havoc, or simple human greed, or corruption.

Humans were complicated creatures. Malevolence and grace, empathy and hatred, all wrapped up in one. That was their gift, that they could determine their own paths. Though it seemed that angels and demons had a bit more ability to choose than advertised.

Crowley stepped to his side and put an arm around him. They leaned against one another, looking down at the poppy.

“Were you here?” asked Crowley, voice hushed, as if to break the silence were a sin.

“Briefly,” admitted Aziraphale. “There was a young man… I made sure his poetry made it to the hands of the one he loved.”

Crowley nodded. Perhaps he found it a proper task for an angel. Aziraphale would carry that day with him. And it was only one. The people here had suffered for many more than that. 

“I avoided it,” Crowley admitted. “Seen enough human suffering. After all, that’s my job. Or was.” They were still sorting all that out. Aziraphale knew perfectly well that Crowley’s demonic deeds tended more towards the annoying or obnoxious rather than out and out harm. No matter how many commendations hell had sent his way just because he happened to be in the area.

Aziraphale crouched down and put the poppy back. “The place will be full of school children before too long,” he said quietly.

“The road goes ever on and on,” muttered Crowley.

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow, but refrained from commenting. Crowley still claimed he didn’t read. Instead, he took Crowley’s hand, leading him out of the field.

The sun was higher now and they could hear the sound of children nearby, no doubt the first school bus’s worth. Most of the children would be bored, some of them would pretend to be soldiers, but a few might listen, not just to the teacher, but to what the ground had to say, the ghosts of the living and the fallen.

An angel and a demon walked away from an overgrown battlefield. Among all the creatures on the earth, they carried memories of thousands of years of human existence. They had seen humanity rise and stumble and rise again more times than they’d care to count. They knew the human capacity for love and terror. They had witnessed the whole of human history. Not so long ago they’d defied heaven and hell to give the world another season.

Children roamed grass once watered by bloodshed. Time, as always, softened the harsh edges of history and left hope in its wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to astudyinfic for reading along and for eloquated for letting me edit at her.
> 
> The land still very much bears scars of World War I. Theres's pictures [here](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/europe-landscape-still-scarred-world-war-i-180951430/) and an article [here](https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/10/europe/verdun-world-war-1-centenary-intl/index.html) about how Verdun is still haunted


End file.
